Friday, February 17, 2006

How Does He Hate Us, Let Us Count...

Olmert justified his plan to vacate the West Bank, which is within rocket firing range of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, by claiming Arabs will soon outnumber Jews and threaten the country's Jewish character.

But recent studies indicate Olmert is relying on faulty demographic information and that Jews likely will outnumber Arabs by more than double in 20 years.

One study, titled "Forecast for Israel and the West Bank 2025," found Palestinians have inflated their population figures by as much as 1.5 million. It also said Jewish birthrates are on the rise while Palestinian rates are falling, and that Israel's own statistics fail to account for even low levels of Jewish immigration when calculating national demographic trends.

Americans Bennet Zimmerman, Roberta Seid and Michael Wise put the current Palestinin-Arab population of the West Bank at 1.4 million and Gaza 1.1 million, for a total of 2.4 million, instead of the 3.8 million reported by the Palestinian Authority Central Bureau of Statistics.

They found faults in the methods used by the Palestinian Authority to determine its population, including counting the 230,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem twice and retroactively raising growth and birth rates while the rates actually have been declining.

The allegedly inflated PA population numbers have been accepted by Israel and were used in formulating future demographic statistics, including those reportedly used by Olmert in formulating a West Bank withdrawal.

"It is ironic that just as we now find Israel is in the best position ever with regard to population, Olmert announces a plan to run away and give up the West Bank, claiming Israel's Jewish character is threatened," said Zimmerman.


From this article.

So, can Olmert count or does he just hate now the Jewish civilian revenants living in those portions of the Jewish National Home awarded by the League of Nations to the Jewish people not yet under full Jewish sovereignty to undermine at the wrong time what all Israeli governments have succeeded in achieving these 39 years?

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